Kidnapped - Robert Louis Stevenson

The captain was in the right of it. We had run down a boat in the fog, and she
had parted in the midst and gone to the bottom with all her crew but one. This
man (as I heard afterwards) had been sitting in the stern as a passenger, while the
rest were on the benches rowing. At the moment of the blow, the stern had been
thrown into the air, and the man (having his hands free, and for all he was
encumbered with a frieze overcoat that came below his knees) had leaped up and
caught hold of the brig’s bowsprit. It showed he had luck and much agility and
unusual strength, that he should have thus saved himself from such a pass. And
yet, when the captain brought him into the round-house, and I set eyes on him